Hi Jason, I'm worried about your doubts. I think that DQS couldn't be solved a data alignment problem and I think that a such subject it isn't very known in the Microsoft world.

I try to explain better the issue, with an example. Suppose to have two databases, the first one in a main office named Production, the second one in a sales branch office named Sales. The Production db contains the Products table, with ProductID and ProductName,
and the Sales db contains the Orders table, with the OrderID, OrderDate, OrderedProductID and OrderedProductName. Now, it could be an error in OrderedProductID and/or OrderedProductName respect to the same product as registered in the Products table. So, it
is necessary to align the products data of the Orders table with the corresponding values of the Products table.

It is like doing matching between two tables to find similar rows and showing them side by side.

DQS only does matching on a single source data set, and compares the values within the set to look for duplicates, using the semantic knowledge in the domains and domain values. It doesn't really let you do diffing or matching between two sets like that
side by side.

There isn't a canned way to connect the two similar tables, to find the possible overlaps and make them more correct.

I think you can make a VIEW to UNION on the selects from the two tables, and see if DQS finds the matches across the two sets, but your goal may not be to eliminate duplicates. DQS would cluster the similar results, so the Data Steward can see them and know
about the potential duplicates.

Another approach may be to use SSIS and the Fuzzy Lookup component, to compare the two sets and find potential similar results across the two tables.

Just curious, do you use a product that does this today alignment feature?

Thanks, Jason

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there are other market players capable to manage data alignment issues, fe SAS. I think that Microsoft SQL Server solutions should improve about this subject. Your suggests lead to a possible solution. Really, it is more important the data alignment process
or the functional view rather than the technologies to solve it.

Perhaps, I've an alternative way. I think it is possible to assume one of two tables as the master data container. This master table in DQS could become a knowledge base with his domains and rules. In DQS, the second table could be matched respect to the
knowledge base and the results produced by the data quality operations could be viewed and approved inside Master Data Services.

I think that when a new technology is available, it is important to understand where and how it must be used in a business process. In this way, Microsoft technologies could be winning respect to another player that owns a product and not a platform
or a technology set.

so what are you trying to 'allign' and what is the reference point? I would assume that the master catalog of products (IDs and names) is the in the production DB and that the sales DB is the one having issues with their product IDs and/or names. For that,
before deciding in the toolset you need to explain to us and to yourself what are the rules to resolve the discrepancy. eg

The OrderedProductID is correct and can be used to fix the OrderedProductName

The OrderedProductName is correct and can be used to fix the OrderedProductID

neither The OrderedProductID nor OrderedProductName are relaible, but other attributes can be used such as unit price, some dates, etc

Some analytics tools like SAS could certanly run some models in the data and present to you patterns, distributions, etc, but that would yous give you the insight. You would like want/need to analyze those results and then implement a second process
to fix the data.

If you decompose this problem, I am sure you could solve it with SS2012 tools, and you can keep posting your questions here to help you.

I doubt you will find a silver bullet to do all this for you automatically.

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